What rules for MPs and companies?

British MPs are caught in an expenses scandal despite a comprehensive code of ethics. What went wrong? We analyse one commentator's view.

Source: Today, 15/6/9, p.B5
Headline: Avoid the KPI trap
Writer: John Bittleston

Quote1
A 72-page guide tells MPs what they may charge the taxpayer. ... Why, then, are so many British MPs and Ministers having to repay money, with several resigning? ...

Comment1
This poses the question. Now for the answer.

Quote2
Seventy-two pages were ... too many. Any rule book incites us to find a way around those rules we do not like. ...

Comment2
Two answers asserted:
1. Too many rules.
2. People seek loopholes.

Quote3
To make measurement work for us ... requires that we know what measures are relevant. ... A frightening example is of an overseas hospital that met its key performance indicators (KPIs) consistently for several years but ... the hospital's KPIs did not include saving life or making patients tolerably comfortable or clean. ...

Comment3
A third answer is proposed:
3. Irrelevant rules (this is illustrated by an example)

Quote4
As soon as you draw up rules, everyone looks for what is missing as well as what is there. ...

Comment4
An earlier answer if re-asserted: People seek loopholes.

Quote5
Not all rules are bad; many are essential. The highway would become a battlefield if the rules of the road were not strictly observed. But no amount of highway codes can replace careful driving.

Comment5
The example if the highway is cited to show that it is essential to have some rules (but not 72 pages of them). Then it is asserted that nothing can replace "careful driving".

Quote6
No books of rules can substitute for a commonsense view of how we should behave.

Comment6
The analogy is completed: "careful driving" translates into "commonsense view of how we should behave". What is propounded here is a "commonsense ethics".

Quote7
Defining the line too clearly between honoured and broken trust is not the way to go. Let each person find the line for himself or herself, and let the courts decide if someone has stepped over it. Then let the penalty for a Breach of Trust be of such deterrence that we all keep well behind the line.

Comment7
"Defining the line too clearly" refers to "having too many rules". This is not the way to go. "Let each person find the line" refers to having a commonsense ethics. Courts should rule on possible transgressions, and penalties should be severe enough to be deterrents.

Notice that the points about irrelevant rules and highway rules do not figure in this solution. The basis of this solution is the analogy with highway rules. Analogies are the weakest type of argument -- and work only so long as the similarity stands. Does the similarity stand?

I have two further questions:

1. How is the court to rule on transgressions if we are to "let each person find the line"?
2. Once we have a collection of court rulings, do we not have a comprehensive set of rules?

END